Almost one month ago, Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein, one of the rashei yeshiva at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel told the following story during a sichah, an address that he delivered in the beit midrash to the entire student body and faculty.
“When I was in high school” the rosh yeshiva began, “someone did something on Purim that caused tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage to the school.” He didn’t say hat had happened, imagine someone hanging from a chandelier and then having it fall and break or something comparably damaging. In response, Rabbi Aryeh Binah z’l, the principal of the high school, lit into this student, pouring fire and brimstone upon that student. Rav Moshe said that one could characterize the situation in this way: “the principal attacked someone who had done something wrong, and all the rest of us enjoyed the show.”
They enjoyed the show, until their principal said, “I am not speaking to him. In this situation he is a fool and what sort of claim can one make against a fool?” “My claim,” he continued, “is against everyone else in the room who created an atmosphere where this fool thought his irresponsible behavior would be well received.”
As soon as their principal said this, all of the students in the room realized that they were each some small part of the source of the problem.
There are people who cause great damage because their self-control is not as strong as their impulsivity, or their aggression, or their poor judgement. But in order to cause significant harm they must be surrounded by those who do know better but lack the willingness to act better. Rav Moshe’s story, and the anger that the principal directed at the entire student body leads us to ask which is more harmful, malice or cowardice?
Our Torah portion this morning is a litany of profiles in cowardice. We encounter example after example of people who don’t confront evil or who don’t confront unpleasant realities and instead try to hedge and finesse between doing what is right and doing what is comfortable. This pattern continues, until, at long last, someone decides to take matters into her own hands.
At the beginning of the Torah portion Yosef has embraced his role as the favorite son of his father and shows off his fancy multi-colored coat to his brothers. He has grandiose dreams, which he tells to his brothers in a way that he should have known would cause enmity. In the words of one of my children, “Yosef was a sore winner.” Yaakov watches this unfold,
וְאָבִ֖וי שָמַ֥ר אֶה־תַדָבָֽר
and Yaakov does nothing. Yaakov was concerned by Yosef ’s behavior and even criticizes him for sharing his grandiose, but he sits tight.
Once the brothers throw Yosef into the pit and plot to kill him, hapless Reuven tries to rescue Yosef. He doesn’t directly confront his brother’s violent intentions. He merely points out how much more pleasant it would be if Yosef would be left to die in the pit without the brothers striking a hand against him. Perhaps a more confrontational approach would have spoken to the better angels of the brothers and shifted the tide of public opinion among the ten brothers against murder of all kinds.
Yehuda makes a similar mistake. He did not know that Reuven had intended to rescue Yosef and so he leaps at the chance to sell Yosef to Egypt as a slave. Yes, he avoids murder, but he never confronts or condemns the cruelty and the wrongness of this brother’s plot. “What profit is there in killing him” is a tactic that saves Yosef ’s life. But by putting off a confrontation, evading and delaying the need to make hard choices, we never know if Yosef ’s freedom could have been saved as well.
The next person who is unwilling to make a brave choice is Onan. He is in a levirate marriage to Tamar but has no intention of establishing a child for his deceased older brother. He could release Tamar from the marriage so she could find another husband with another family. But that would subject him to criticism from his family and community. After all, what sort of man would deny a child to his dead brother? And yet he remains unwilling to do what is expected of him. The Torah does not share his motives but the dishonorable way that he conceals his unwillingness is cowardly. Tamar might never have known the true nature of her own marriage to Onan. And Onan himself presented himself in public as an honorable husband and brother, when he was neither.
Once Onan dies Yehuda finds himself confronted with a dilemma of his own. He is terrified that Tamar is a “katlanit” a woman who brings bad luck or bad health to her husbands. Since two have died while married to her Yehuda does not want to lose a third son. Yet he too refuses to free her from the levirate bonds to his family. He keeps her bound in a contradictory position. He withholds his son Shelah from her, and he keeps her from leaving his family and finding another husband in a different family.
Yehuda is unwilling to face Tamar, person to person, and confront her about his suspicions that marriage to her is deadly. And at the same time he is unwilling to face his community with the acknowledgement that he has failed to produce a child for his dead son. Tamar is trapped by Yehuda’s fear of confrontation. Tamar is bound by Yehuda’s anxiety about his reputation.
When Tamar disguises herself and seduces Yehuda she forces the issue so that it can no longer be ignored. Whether she did the right thing or the wrong thing, she didn’t look for the easy way out and she forced Yehuda, finally, at long last, to avoid the easy way out.
Why is this story in the middle of Yosef story? It cannot be merely because of the timeline, that this is when the events occurred because the Torah often tells us things in a different order than the one in which they occurred. This episode, which unfolded over several year is located at this point in the Torah because it is important for understanding the Yosef story.
One connection is that this story describes how Yehuda lost two of his sons and feared loosing a third. This experience lets him sympathize with his own father as the story continues. Each of them found themselves in the same situation, hoping to protect a third child after two have gone missing. Yehuda develops sympathy for his father that will serve him well later in the story.
And Yehuda is taught by Tamar that courage and confrontation are sometimes necessary. We may have to do unpleasant things but that is a small cost to protect the innocent. We, and our comfort and our reputations, are not the real victims and shouldn’t be the real focus.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 